Columbus School District Snatches Already Purchased Bus Passes from Students

Larry Wilson dreamed of winning the starting fullback job on the Beechcroft High School football team this fall.

Instead, the 16-year-old junior quit the team this week, after playing football for the past five years.

A decision by Columbus City Schools last week to temporarily pull COTA bus privileges for almost 17,400 students brought an abrupt end to Wilson’s dream.

“I need (COTA) to go to football practice,” he said. “I just have no transportation.”

Beechcroft, on the North Side, is about 16 miles from Wilson’s home on the Hilltop. When he tried to get on a COTA bus this week, the driver told him he had to pay.

“I don’t really have bus money,” Wilson said.

Columbus school district taxpayers already have paid $520,000 so that every high-school student could have unlimited bus rides through the end of September. Students used the bus passes almost 3.9 million times between January 2008 and the end of last month. Hundreds of thousands of those rides were in the summer, according to records provided by the Central Ohio Transit Authority.

I can’t say I understand this move. It doesn’t help the school system’s budget since they have already paid for the bus passes. It hurts COTA’s ridership numbers that they have to report to the NTD. Most of all, it hurts the kids who can’t afford to travel without the COTA passes. What is going on?

He’s probably eligible for a transfer through No Child Left Behind since West meets few standards. Franklin Heights is in South-Western City Schools, so that wouldn’t make sense, although it is also a poorly performing school. Beechcroft is pretty bad too, so he probably transferred for football or other non-academic reasons.

Parents/guardians may apply for a different conventional or alternative school through the NCLB process, if eligible, or through the Parent Choice lottery process for the following September, typically beginning in January for High School and early February for Middle and Elementary Schools. You are highly encouraged to investigate your choices by visiting the school, reading the school profile (link on the School Choice/Lottery home page), or visiting the school fair before filing an application.

It looks like Superintendent Harris decided to pull the passes without informing the Board, without understanding what the effect would be, and basically without cause since they said the so-called “misbehavior” is mostly not high school students.

Saying Superintendent Gene Harris has done “a disservice to our students,” the vice president of the Columbus Board of Education will urge her colleagues Tuesday to order Harris to reinstate COTA bus passes for high-school students.

Harris, speaking publicly for the first time since passes were abruptly pulled last weekend, changed the district’s official stance on why they were pulled, saying today that student “misbehavior” on buses was behind it.

And though Columbus high-school students eventually will get their passes back, possibly as late as October, charter-school and private-school students won’t, Harris said. The district has determined that it’s not required legally to provide passes to them, she said.

Columbus athletes needing transportation to practices until school starts in late August still must find their own rides, Harris said.

She acknowledged that district officials hadn’t really understood how suspending passes would affect them. As of this evening, she still had no count of how many athletes are stranded from practice.

Harris also acknowledged that she suspended the passes without informing the board, though she said she told President Carol L. Perkins and Vice President Stephanie Groce a few weeks ago.

[…] just 0.2% of students (36/17,400) were a problem on buses, but that was enough for Columbus Schools Superintendent Gene Harris to suspend all students’ transportation options. The Dispatch discusses how the Columbus School Board has ordered her to stand down. Students can […]